The Earl of Pudding's Trip to Publix
by Beyond An Anomaly
Summary: Crackfic. Lloyd notices that the last pudding cup disappeared from his fridge. As injustice would have it, he now has to make the dangerous trek to Publix to be reunited with his precious pudding. Meanwhile, the Student Council of Ashford Academy has some cereal to buy for Milly's latest schoolwide event, so that means only chaos can ensue. Please don't take this seriously.
1. The Angsty Ball of Angst

**_This is a crackfic I wrote a few days after finishing Code Geass for the first time._**

 ** _I am so sorry._**

 ** _-BAA_**

* * *

Lloyd Asplund couldn't look.

Covering his trembling lips with his quivering hand, Lloyd was close to vomiting in disgust and disappointment. He turned his head and closed his eyes, counting to three before he faced the void that was the cold, unforgiving refrigerator. Maybe something would be different. Maybe he would find solace again.

Maybe there would be pudding th-NOPE.

He was close to crying at this point, and, wincing, he felt the whites of his eyes strain as he pulled every morsel one by one out of the fridge stained with perpetual hatred for him. They weren't behind the olives, or the milk, or Cecile's stupid dumbass hippy dippy juice blend of kale and figs and soil. Not in the shelf next to the ketchup or Suzaku Kurugi's Danimals smoothies Cecile packed in his lunch. No.

They weren't anywhere.

The pudding.

His pudding.

It was-

"GONE!" Lloyd wailed, slamming the fridge door so hard that all of Suzuki Kurukia's crayon drawings fell right off, fluttering helplessly to the ground the follow the scientist's descent to the oak floor. With this, he sputtered, "All gone…"

Banging his fists softly against the floor, he couldn't help but shudder at the idea at someone stealing one of his precious pudding cups, the last one no less. The thought of the tantalizing vanilla cup in someone else's mitts made him shed a single tear, a tear that reflected the transgressions of this sinful world in which it was totally okay to steal what was rightfully his.

His pudding.

"G-Gone…"

He hunched over in his ball of angst and starvation, feeling his gullet slowly wither away with every second deprived of artificial flavoring. Feeling every thread of his being slipping into this inescapable hole of hellish nothing, the scientist knew he had to do something.

And fast.

As per usual, he came to the consensus to call Cecile to do that something for him.

"Cecile!" he bellowed down the corridor of the military base he and his [basically mom] assistant resided in, alongside their Knightmare tester and guinea pig in everything, Suzumba Kombucha. Huffing at the silence, Lloyd blew a stray piece of lavender hair out of his face and ascended to his knees with, "Ceciiiiiiiile! We don't have any pudding, Cecile! We need to get some more!"

Pushing up his glasses, he groaned at the very thought of standing up from his egg of angst. Once more, "CECIIIIIIILE! I'M DYING!"

And within a matter of seconds, Cecile came with a band of morticians, a pre-made coffin, a hurse, and her lawyer, along with a will the scientist didn't fully recall writing. Lloyd was rather impressed to see the coffin had the perfect measurements, if not disturbed as all hell.

There before him, as implored for, was Cecile Croomy, who sprinted to his location at the speed of light at the very thought of his death and the apparent willingness to sacrifice all of his royal family inheritance to his loyal servant as his final written death wish.

"OH…GOD, LLOYD…" Cecile got down on her knees to annunciate every syllable as she felt Lloyd's forehead, then his pulse, then held his face firmly in her hand, gripping his pale cheeks tightly. Dramatically, she inquired, "ARE…YOU OKAY? I HEARD YOU WERE DYING AND-"-completely not forced at all sniffle-"I RAN HERE…AS SOON AS I CAN…BECAUSE I CARE…FOR…"-completely didn't look at the smudged writing on the wrist-"YOU WITH ALL…I…HAVE…AND WHEN YOU DIE…"-look again and sniffle, this time wrapping arms furiously around Lloyd as if he was a being remotely capable of embracing-"I PROMISE TO…DONATE YOUR MONEY TO CHARITY…AND BURY YOU UNDER THE…"-Cecile, at this point, realized that rehearsal is, like, really important-"NICEST, SHADIEST TR-"

"Cecile!" Lloyd tossed off his assistant's bizarrely tight grip around him. Almost suffocating. How strange. "I'm not dying!"

The team of morticians all looked at each other, raising eyebrows, and quickly left the military base, knowing they were most certainly needed elsewhere in the anime. Looking back at Lloyd, Cecile asked, this time in her normal voice, "What?"

Lloyd rolled his eyes and pushed his glasses up his nose.

"Don't sound too disappointed, now." he huffed.

"Then…" Cecile looked around, seeing there were no weapons of mass destruction or mentally astray Britainians in their fifty-foot radius. "Then why did you say you were?"

"Because, well, if you'd wish to get technical," Lloyd, with a wheeze, stood up, with Cecile following suit. He opened the fridge, gesturing at the disappointing lack of cornstarch and vanilla extract. Come to think of it, there was nothing terribly unhealthy in their fridge. They even had calorie-free water. "I'm dying emotionally due to the lack of pudding."

Cecile, much to Lloyd's unpleasant surprise, shrugged her shoulders with a deadpan, "So?"

"…What…" Lloyd sputtered, "What do you mean 'so'?"

"Well, like," Cecile peered more into the fridge with, "What's the big deal if we don't have any pudding?"

At this statement, Lloyd felt like his soul had ascended to another dimension in the hopes of escaping the feral world he so lived in at that moment where no one cared for his desperate longing for his favorite one-hundred calorie delight.

Cecile, gesturing the scientist to move aside, peered further into the fridge.

"We actually don't have too much, more than just pudding," Cecile hummed, "Looks like a trip to the store needs to be made. No seaweed chips, no tofu anything…no gluten-free bread-bites for Suzambini's lunch…"

"And no pudding!" Lloyd repeated, chipping right in. Cecile whirled her head around towards the scientist and huffed.

She rolled her eyes, inquiring, "Are you really that adamant about getting pudding?"

Lloyd nodded, wincing. Cecile took out the maybe/probably forged will and flipped it over, pulling a pen out of her front pocket and jotted down all of the missing contents from the vegan refrigerator, and hastily scribbled "pudding" at the very bottom. She handed the slip to Lloyd, huffing, "Well, in that case, why don't you do the shopping?"

He gasped.

Shaking his head in disbelief, Lloyd stuttered, "S-S-Sho-"

"Yes. Shop-ping." Cecile annunciated, handing Lloyd his wallet, "I always do the groceries. It's your turn."

"B-But why-"

"Because I don't know what type of pudding you want."

"Vanil-"

"Eh. I'm not in the mood. I go once a week, and you haven't gone once. So," Cecile retorted repeating, "It's your turn. If you want pudding so badly, go get it yourself, and get everything else on the list while you're at it to kill two birds with one stone."

Cecile walked down the corridor while finally adding, "If you have any questions on what to get or if you're confused with how to use your credit card, please hesitate to call me."

With a whoosh, she was gone, leaving the pudding-deprived scientist alone by the cold, heartless refrigerator. And with a moan, he looked down at the shopping list, only to faint at the sight of at least seventy different items crammed before him on that sheet with "pudding" in the faintest of margins.

Lloyd Asplund just couldn't look.


	2. The Monumental Breakfast Dash

Meanwhile, the Student Council of Ashford Academy was making their rounds about Publix, with Milly Ashford excitedly pushing around the cart. This was a busy Tuesday for the group of teens, and it was bustling during that Sunday afternoon at the ornate grocery store that only the most elite of Britainians could afford. Carts flew from aisle to aisle, or, in the group's case, down the same aisle, frantically in the hopes of finding deals and decadent means of nourishment for the rest of the week. Sundays at the grocery store, see, was seen as the prime time to shop for necessities and the use the most useful of coupons, along with the time for cashiers to pray heavily and question their choice of profession.

Rivalz Cardemonde rode in this cart with his legs crossed, hastily gathering whatever was thrown around his radius around him like a wall of protection and high amounts of corn syrup. Lelouch Lamperouge tossed in every box of cereal and juice box pack Milly pointed at with each sprint down the aisles, with the blushing Shirley Fanette following behind him. Sashimi Kombini was doing just the same as his counterpart with a brown sack in hand that carried his lunch, since he figured that, since this was a shopping trip with Milly, he would be there until his tuition ran out. And Nina Einstein was probably somewhere screwing a table and thinking of Princess Euphemia. Who cares, though?

It's Nina.

"Nice work, team!" Milly exclaimed, strutting down the emptying cereal aisle for the seventeenth time. "At this rate, we'll be all set for the Ashford Academy Annual Celebratory Cereal Breakfast Bash in no time!"

Muffled at this point by the cluster of cereal boxes and packs of juices around him, Rivalz poked out a thumbs-up from the cart's contents with a resounding, "Yeah! Anything for our amazing Student Council president!"

Lelouch whirled around towards a box of Wheaties and tucked it into a crevice of the cart's pile.

"I would just love to know who could eat this much cereal…" he trailed off, "Literally all I can have are Wheaties."

"Ew, Wheaties?" Shirley asked, "Why?"

Lelouch looked at her for a moment, and she immediately blushed, folding her arms with, "I-I mean, Wheaties are fine! Everyone has their own tastes, Lou-lou, I…heheheheh…"

Stopping in the middle of the aisle to gaze at the ever-growing pile, Milly stated, "Okay! Who wants to do a tally of what we have so far?"

Rivalz, with a gasp for air, shoved his head through an opening of the cereal and juice cluster, list in hand. Taking out a pen, he checked off, "Thirteen boxes of Cheerios, seven honey-nut, five regular, and two of that weird chocolate flavor, nine boxes of Lucky Charms, five boxes of Trix, seven boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, twelve boxes of Rice Crispies, with seven of those boxes being the chocolate flavor, six boxes of Frosted Flakes, two boxes of Honey Smacks, two boxes of Corn Pops, and a single box of Wheaties that Lelouch just added, along with seventeen boxes of Capri-Sun, ALL of them being Wild Cherry."

Look at that. Look at that product placement. Kelloggs? General Mills? You can just take my endorsement checks to my car.

"Oh God," Subaru Karowinds gasped, glancing at how the pile was gradually reaching the top of the aisle and was stacked like a Jenga tower. "That's a lot of cereal."

"That's the point, silly!" Milly ruffled Sublime's hair with, "The Celebratory Cereal Breakfast Bash is where all of the students in Ashford gather for wholesome bowls of cereal as fellow class-mates, and it's a tradition that has been passing through Ashford Academy for ages!"

"Oh, really?" Super Kitten asked, "How long?"

With a moment of thought, Milly answered with, "How long have we been in here again?"

"Two hours." Lelouch hummed, stretching his tired joints.

"Yeah," Milly nodded with a triumphant smile, exclaiming, "That!"

Submarine raised a brow but shrugged it off. He had no time to ask any more questions, as Milly pointed down the aisle with, "Another run-through! Forward march, team!"

And so, the Student Council went through the aisle once more, with a few Publix associates desperately playing rock-paper-scissors upfront to decide which oh-so-lucky cashier got the answer to check that crazy blonde lady with the cereal and cherry cravings out.


	3. On Sacrifices and Pizza Endorsements

Just as the teens pranced down the same aisle to wipe out Publix's cereal inventory, Lloyd wandered through the bakery at least twelve times, confused to not find his precious pudding among the freshly made desserts. He pushed around his depressingly empty green cart in defeat until a uniformed Publix baker asked him, "Need any help today, sir?"

Lloyd whirled around to see a young man with a hairnet smile before him, and at this smile, he hesitantly responded with, "Um…where's your pudding?"

"That'll be on Aisle 27, with the addicting snacks that have taken over the past few generations!" the associate responded, holding before Lloyd a tray of key lime pie samples, "Care for a sample of pie?"

"Erm…" Lloyd looked down the corner, only seeing Aisle 7 on the far side of the store. "Where is that?"

"Simple!" the associate, with a grin too big for the average human being, replied with, "Just go down to Aisle 7, then go down it, spin your cart around three times, clap your hands for five seconds, then sacrifice your first-born and pray that God will be merciful enough to lead you down the right path, and you should be there! See? Simple! Pie?"

"Uh…" Lloyd looked down the far side of the store again, stating, "T-Thank you. I just thought that the cupped pudding was…you know…"

"Freshly baked?" the associate laughed, "Oh no! I can easily see how you would make such an assumption, though! Haha!" he began to head back to the bakery counter with his lone tray of samples, waving to the scientist with, "Now you have a nice day, sir!"

At this, Lloyd walked with his cart down the aisle, as the associate glared down at his sample tray and grumbled, sputtering with defeat at the idea that a grown man had no idea that cold, lifeless, processed pudding in a cup wasn't freshly baked. Quietly, he ate his samples alone, amazed that seven years of acting school brought him to answering simple questions such as, "Do these chocolate chip cookies have chocolate in them?" and, "Is this bread gluten-free?"

Perhaps those seven years of acting school went to SOMETHING; those smiles towards those questions didn't seem as mentally straining as they once did.

Also, have any of you ever had Publix's key lime pie?

Bruh.

As the man ate the samples, he saw the poor, confused puppy off, who grabbed a fistful of sanitization wipes from a stand nearby and wiped his cart down. Six times.

(*)

Lelouch, tossing in every tasteless rehash of Kashi cereal atop poor Rivalz, looked down the aisles between the cereal aisle the crew practically lived in at this point. To his left was the aisle adorning every single organic thing a normal member of society would barely afford, all GMO, cage, calorie, sodium, carbohydrate, vitamin, disease, and taste-free. The kombucha that was made before Woodstock and the counterpart Kashi bars that tasted like soil older than Christ.

And on the aisle on the right, on the International Aisle…

"Ohhhhh, I see how it is," a young man huffed, wearing a pair of Groucho glasses and sliding a hand through his slick, red hair. In his other hand was a packaged container of Pocky, and he continued his rant with, "These Britanians are toooootally okay with eating our damn food, but God FORBID them being okay with us in our own country!"

"Keep your voice down!" another man, who appeared to be the leader of the group, shushed the red-haired man and he himself wore a pair of Groucho glasses. Everyone in his group seemed to. "If anyone here notices us, we could be arrested! We just came here to stock up for the next month and get key lime pie samples, so now's not the time to go on a political tangent, Tamiki!"

"But Oh-" the young man gasped for air as he was elbowed in the gut by a younger, red-headed woman. She huffed at him with a scornful look on her face.

"He said be quiet, idiot!" she rasped, adding, as she swiped the box of Pocky from Tamiki's hands, "Be sure to grab five more boxes. Ooh, and they have Cookies and Cream? Dude!"

Lelouch's eyes widened to see her, as Shirley, behind him, remarked, "Man, I wish Kallen was here!"

And, the thing is, she was.

Yes, Lelouch was no fool. He could see any member of The Black Knights from anywhere, and there were Ohgi, Tamiki, Kallen, General Todoh, the other female person, and a few other people that were Japanese and really, really salty. They were there to stock up for their troops, and with their Groucho glasses, frantic whispering, and carts gradually filling to the brim with survival materials and Kallen's Pocky, they weren't conspicuous at all.

With a bit of an awkward tinge in his voice, Lelouch chuckled with, "Haha…yeah…me too. Ha."

Immediately, he pushed Shirley away from his end of the aisle and towards the opposite direction.

"Haha yeah we should get going guys ha yeah ha," Lelouch stuttered, hands on Shirley's back. She blushed even more, but it's not like she was into Lelouch or anything…baka.

"Wait, but we still-" Milly remarked, with Rivalz slowly dying in his endless pile of colorful grain and Caprisun. He reached out a hand, a quivering hand that begged to be spared and to once more see the sun. The beautiful sun.

"They have a sale on pizza and you know of our endorsement with pizza haha yeah let's go to the frozen food aisle on the complete opposite side of the store to go get the pizza haha yeah pizza."

"But we only have an endorsement deal with Pizza Hu-WAH!"

Lelouch yanked the cart, skidding it away to the refrigerators at the end of the store that housed what was really important: pizza, the popsicles perpetually on sale, and Hot Pockets. As the wheels screeched along the tile, Rivalz's hand limped over the edge of the box of Wheaties. The three other members followed hesitantly.

"Lelouch," Milly grabbed five boxes of Raisin Bran on her way out, adding, "What are you doing?!"

"We still need to get more cereal, Lou-Lou!" Shirley noted, "The pres says so!"

"We are going fast." Sonic the Kookaburra made that obvious notion, his brown hair flowing as he hastily followed the swerving cart. I really don't have anything interesting for him to say at the moment, tbh.

Fourth wall? I love that band!


	4. I Call Waluigi Screw Yoshi

On the other side of the Frozen Food aisle, Lloyd stood before his options.

He came for vanilla. Vanilla. Yum-yum.

And there it was before him. Perf.

But, like, banana pudding-flavored pudding?

Bruuuuuuuh.

After a hum of thought, Lloyd decided to use no thought at all and scooped an entire display of pudding from the shelves into his cart. He didn't count how many fell in, along with what exact flavors, but emptying two shelves of pudding single-handedly, he figured the vanilla he so searched for made its way into his cart, along with tantalizing banana.

He did the same with the tapioca above and the chocolate below, plastic clattering within his green cart. He was satisfied with this now ample supply, but he couldn't help but think of how his pudding ran out so quickly. Surely no one else in the base would have taken any of his pudding cups, right?

Right?

Lloyd rubbed his chin and hummed in thought, pushing up his glasses as he did. With roughly two-hundred cups in his possession, surely he would never have that problem again, or at least for a while. Yet again, it was a mystery that the last cup disappeared and he completely didn't know about it.

Curious.

Also, taking all of these confectionaries out to the Knightmare would prove to be a challenge. Hopefully those commercials for this place were real, where it's completely storming and some happy person carries an umbrella over the customer as they push their cart out to their vehicle; it was a good thing he found a spot up front for his Knightmare. It was blue and white and had a charming stick figure of a person sitting down in a nice chair on it; a stroke of luck, really!

All that was missing was the person to do the hard part.

"Lelouch, why do we need all this pizza?"

The scientist's head perked up at the familiar voice, whirling his cart out the aisle to find his guinea pig Subway accompanying some of his acquaintances, including his fiancée and what Lloyd could have sworn was a body in the cart. Eyes widening in delight, Lloyd called, "Sooooooup!"

The brown-haired boy, looking away from the frantic Lelouch stuffing frozen pizzas in whatever empty space in the cart he could find while the other two girls stared in confusion, turned to see his boss with a crap-ton on pudding.

"Oh! Earl Asplund!" he replied, walking towards him while swinging his brown sack. "What are you doing here?"

"We ran out of pudding, Kalamari…" Lloyd growled, "Someone took my last cup without telling me. Can you believe it?"

"Whoa…no kidding!"

"I know! And this trip has been quite vexing," the scientist continued, "Apparently the pudding wasn't in the bakery, so I had to sacrifice a child to get here."

"A…child?"

"Well, I mean, not a REAL child. More like my first Neopet. It was the closest thing that I had to a first-born," Ignoring the perplexed look he was getting from Sushi, Lloyd got to his point with, "Anyway, I need someone to take this out to my car. Care to help?"

"Um…sure!" he responded, "We just need to pay for it!"

"What?"

With a moment of silence, Sunburn Krispy Kreme sighed and took the cart, pushing it towards the front of the store with the sack still in hand and mumbling to his friends, "I'll see you guys later. Like, in a few days."

As the two men left the aisle, Milly gave her fiancé a small wave, having a sudden daydreaming moment worthy of her wince.

 _"Millyyyyyyyy! We don't have any food in the fridge!"_

 _"Well, why don't you go the store?"_

 _"Don't you have to pay for groceries?"_

 _"Um…yes!"_

 _"Okay…I'll get some pudding."_

 _"We need some other food, too!"_

 _"Okay. I'll get some tapioca. God…"_

 _The exhausted Milly, groaning at the kitchen table, is having her limbs constantly pulled by her twelve children, and LITERALLY ALL OF THEM want to play Mario Kart and ARE ALL FIGHTING over Yoshi, so she apparently has to be the mediator and the referee and the snack-giver but guess what all they freaking have is pudding and her useless husband is out to get more and she has to think about what happens when these freaking monsters go through puberty and start having boyfriends and taking the SAT and getting student loans and_

 _"Also, Milly, what do you think about having more kids?"_

Milly let a scream out, gripping her hair and letting her eyes almost pop completely out.

"Uh…Milly?" Shirley put her hand on the quivering Milly's shoulder, "Are you-"

"I DON'T FREAKING CARE WHO'S YOSHI!" the president screeched, sprinting out of the store wailing in horror. Through a few shoppers knocked to the ground, down the conveyor belt of a register, through the double doors, gone. Shirley and Lelouch watched their estranged president bolt off, screaming, "I DON'T WANT ANOTHER PERSON INSIDE MEEEEEEE!"

With a quick stop of her heart, Shirley realized she was now alone with Lelouch. She had to make this last somehow.

"Hey, u-uh, Lou-Lou…" Shirley stuttered, turning to Lelouch, "You know what goes with cereal?"

"Uh…" Lelouch looked around, asking, "What?"

"Literally any kind of fruit!" Shirley answered, taking the cart and Lelouch by the hand. Losing all feeling, she exclaimed, "Let's go to the produce and very slowly grab whatever they have!"

(*)

At last, Lloyd was at the register with his manservant, Spongey Krab with their cashier, Janice.

It was her day off today, but Publix called after management noticed overly excited teenagers and confused scientists prancing around with carts that carried half of the store's inventory of cereal, frozen pizza, cherry Caprisun, and, as it stood before her, pudding. She was shit at rock-paper-scissors, and oh did her fellow cashiers know that, as the loser had to check out the first clown out of the two to show up.

And there he was.

"Hello, sir," Seven years of acting school. For this. "Do you have a Publix membership card?"

"A what?" Lloyd sputtered, "You mean I have to be a member to get groceries here?"

Suitandtie facepalmed at this.

"Um…no," Janice sighed, "It's just for our weekly deals and rewards. Members just get a bunch of benefits and stuff."

"Well, why didn't I get the invitation to join?"

"Well, you can join by going to Customer Service after your ord-"

"Don't any of you know who I am?"

"Oh Christ." Santa Klaus groaned, putting his face in his defeated palms, leaning on the counter. His reminder that he had a bagged lunch was his only solace, really.

"I am Earl Lloyd Asplund, scientist and engineer for the holy empire of Britannia!" he took off his glasses, staring straight into his cashier's defeated eyes with, "Perhaps you didn't notice me because I had my glasses on. An understandable mistake, but I'll have you know that my work can be distinguished in any part of Area 11! I have my own Wikipedia page and Tumblr account with 2,765 followers about my pudding aesthetic! So…"

The earl, professor, doctor, engineer, scientist, and blogger, esquire, (praise be unto him,) went on and on about his worthy successes in life to the cashier that should have rewarded him with a formal invite for Publix's rewards program. Meanwhile, Suntan pounded his head against the counter repeatedly in the hopes of knocking himself out.


	5. One Finale To End Them All

"Oh great! These guys have a sushi bar too!" Tamiki kicked the sushi stand repeatedly, roaring, "So not only did they take our country, but they took our cuisine to-"

General Todoh tackled the angry rebel, pinning him to the ground and brushing back his simply exquisite eyebrows. (Like seriously his eyebrow game is so on fleek holy fricking frick)

"Let's just grab a few boxes before anyone sees," Ohgi whispered to Kallen and the other sassy and salty members of the Black Knights. They wiped out the entire stand. "And let's go, team."

Kallen grabbed the handle of the cart and pushed it quietly towards the front of the store, and turning her head to the left slightly, she almost screeched when she saw Lelouch and Shirley picking out some apples just a few feet. She knew the entire premise of the anime was to create social tension, but this was a quick trip to the grocery store. This was just-

"Kallen?" Shirley looked up and waved excitedly, and the girl at the cart screamed and bolted with the cart. The other members gasped in horror at the innocent student and speedily followed Kallen out. Lelouch, with widened eyes, saw them out.

"Aww…" Shirley sighed, "I just wanted to say hi to her…"

"Oh! Uh…that," Lelouch spun a little lie, "Wasn't Kallen."

"Really? It looked just like her with funny glasses…" Shirley hummed in thought, "Are you sure?"

"Yep so sure yeah yep."

"Why do you seem so nervous and tense all of a sudden?"

"Um well I uh-"

"It wouldn't be because you have unrequited feelings for me and seeing a girl similar to Kallen made you realize that I'm maybe more desirable? That maybe, after all this time, you actually liked me?"

Lelouch, with widened eyes and amazed that Shirley had no questions about the other guys accompanying Kallen or how he knew that that wasn't Kallen, nodded with, "Yep…haha. You got me!"

The girl gasped, embracing Lou-Lou.

"Oh God, Lelouch! This is so exciting! And I accept," she exclaimed, "I'd love to go out with you!"

Lelouch bit her lip and nodded, hesitantly reciprocating the hug. Taking the boy once more by the hand, she positioned four bags of apples down the single hole of the barricade of cereal and juice. A faint grunt of pain could be heard, as Rivalz now had twenty pounds of apples on his chest.

Don't worry. He's fine.

(*)

"Also, if you look really hard, I probably have some article mentioning me in some issue of Shonen Jump, AND ANOTHER THING!"

The cashier, with eye twitching, scanned each pudding and put clusters of them in plastic bags. They were going to rip and she was probably going to get an aneurysm by the end of this transaction, but the sooner they were out of this store, the better.

Twenty plastic bags and two-hundred packs of pudding later, Janice let out a sigh of relief with, "Okay sir, your total is $422.98."

Lloyd paused, looking at the screen that displayed all of his purchased pudding and the total. He raised an eyebrow.

"That much for pudding?"

"You…did purchase two hundred packs. Plus tax."

"It's fine! It's fine," Snickerdoodle Kiteflyer blurted out, handing the cashier his credit card, "It's on me."

The cashier quickly took the card, ready to at least go on a smoke break. An obscenely long smoke break that was the only way to recover from this pudding debacle. As she punched in the account number, the brown-haired lad, (ran out of names, whoops,) turned his head to the left.

And as if by fate…

"Kallen?" he inquired, "What are you doing here? Who are those guys? And…and why are you wearing those gla-"

"DISTRACTION!"

Lelouch yelled the word as he threw an apple perfectly at the back of his friend's head. He sunk to the floor, with Lloyd watching him fall with shock. He won a chess match against the general manager to go through the Express Lane, and he was getting out as fast as he could for too many reasons to count.

"Lou-Lou," Shirley squeaked, seeing the past out Suzaku [:/] sprawled out on the dirty marble tile, apple rolling off in the distance. "Why did you do tha-"

"HWAH!"

He threw an apple at her head too, and Shirley sank to the floor with a thud. The cashier at the Express Lane stared at him as the Black Knights darted to self-checkout, and Lelouch, calmly, gave the man his number for his weekly discounts.

This didn't mean much, though.

"What's the produce code for oranges?"

"Well, what type of oranges do you have, sir? Navel?"

"I don't know!" Jeremiah Gottwald sputtered, a quarter of the oranges in the store on the scale before him. "The orange kind!"

The self-checkout cashier glared at him, rolling the PLU roller and huffing, "Um..sir."

Jeremiah, then, turned his head to the left.

And guess what.

"HOLY SHIT! WHY?" Kallen screamed, collapsing on the ground and banging her fist repeatedly on the floor, "WHYWHYWHYWHYWHY?!"

"That's it. I'm done." Ohgi held his hands in the air, with the rest of the Black Knights following suit. Normally they wouldn't, of course, but this was a trip to PUBLIX. The most difficult part should have been stealing the sampler platter of key lime pie, which General Tohdoh was quietly eating in the midst of their surrender. Jeremiah screeched in shock, only to have an apple pelted at his head and to fall to the ground. The Black Knights noticed this, with the self-checkout cashier gesturing them to the open register and offering free oranges.

(*)

It took six trillion years and one night, but Lloyd and Suzaku finally made it to the Knightmare, which somehow wasn't towed and was actually street legal. The two-hundred packs of pudding stifled them as Lloyd piloted the two-person Knightmare, (okay, I'm no Geass expert, get off my case,) and Suzaku sighed at how they were just minutes away from home. He was somehow this exhausted from lugging this much pudding around for Lloyd, who was relieved that that whole mess was over.

"That was too exhausting, Suzaku," Lloyd sighed, "Remind me to never go shopping for Cecile out of the goodness of my heart again."

The boy was also really hungry and a bit dizzy from that bizarre apple encounter. He had no idea what happened until Lloyd woke him up from that marble floor, but he was too tired and peckish to ask questions. With a satisfied grin, he remembered something.

The sack lunch in his lap that Cecile made him earlier.

He unrolled the folded paper bag and pulled out its contents, smiling at them.

A ham and cheese sandwich cut in the shape of the Lancelot.

An apple with a smiley face carved into it.

Some gluten-free bread bites.

And oh! Look!

"IS THAT THE LAST PUDDING CUP?!"

Suzaku held the lone pudding cup in his hands, eyes widened at the deranged scientist who swerved off the road. The boy sputtered as Lloyd roared, "I WILL KILL CECILE WHEN I GET HOME I SWEAR IT ON MY BLOG!"

(*)

Milly was rocking back and forth on the carpet of the Student Council room, with Nunnally patting her on the head in comfort. Nina was somewhere in the room, but she had to hide because the maid heard interesting noises; all she could hope for at this point was that no one would touch the table.

Lelouch, with a sigh of relief, emptied out all of the contents from the trek to Publix on the table.

"There," he let out a breath, relieved that the day was finally over. The Black Knights were almost caught, two of his friends and an elite Britainian soldier almost found out that Kallen was a member, he had to pretend he wanted to date Shirley all this time, along with having to run back and forth to collect cereal and juice for Milly for over two hours, and he had to explain to the cops on he and Shirley's way out that Rivalz was just sleeping.

"Um…" Shirley held the secretary of the Student Council in her arms, who was groaning a little, so that was good at least. "I'm…gonna put Rivalz to bed. I'll be right back."

"I don't want kids I don't want to play Mario Kart nonononononononono…" Milly whimpered, with Nunnally rubbing her head in worry.

"Well," the young, blind girl said with a comforting tone, "Did you all at least get what you needed for the bash?"

"We did." Lelouch answered. "We got a ridiculous amounts of cereal, some apples, and juice."

"What about milk?"

Lelouch, with widened eyes, stared at his sister for a few moments.

"…What about it?" Lelouch hesitantly questioned.

"Well, um…" Nunnally remarked with her high-pitched voice, "You can't have cereal without milk. So…um…"

Almost howling in agony, Lelouch took the keys to Rivalz's motorcycle, making yet another trek to the store that would probably last for three hours more since he would have to empty out the entire store's inventory of something else.

Par for the course, at this point.

(*)

"YOU GAVE SUZAKU THE LAST PUDDING CUP?!"

Lloyd was having a meltdown, tossing all of the packs into the void of freon and nothingness besides the twenty-seven varieties of pudding. Cecile folded her arms, rolling her eyes.

"Well, we had nothing else, and poor Suzaku had to be fed at some point today!" she countered, looking down at the frantic scientist stuffing to fridge. She then, however, noticed that the last of the groceries he brought to the base were also pudding.

"Um…Lloyd?" she slowly drawled.

Whirling around, exasperated and kissing his mind goodbye, the scientist asked, "WHAT?!"

"Where is…" she took the list from Lloyd's pocket, noticing the one thing crossed off. "Where is everything else I asked you to get from the store?!"

"What do you-" Lloyd cut himself off, pupils shrinking as he saw Cecile growl furiously. She clenched the list, crumpling it in her fist, and taking a stray pudding cup, she pelted it at Lloyd, repeating the process of tossing these cups at him several times.

"YOU ARE SO DEAD, LLOYD!" The two hundred pudding cups were depleting greatly, with Lloyd getting smothered by all the pudding he spent ages looking for. He sacrificed his Neopet for this, lest he forget.

She didn't even look at the receipt. She couldn't. Ever.

The base, basically, exploded with pudding, just as the Student Council exploded with dry cereal. But the Black Knights got some sushi and oranges and somehow got out of this entire mess with Groucho glasses in tow.

That's cool, I guess.

And then CC was locked in Lelouch's room eating Pizza Hut, completely and blissfully unaware of anyhing that occurred that day.

[This fic has been brought to you by Publix. And Pizza Hut. ALWAYS. PIZZA HUT.]


End file.
